The MAA has received funding from the NSF to provide
support
for institutions or groups of institutions that wish to initiate or
expand
undergraduate mathematics conferences. Proposals
for conferences held between January 1, 2005 and December 31, 2005 are now
being accepted. The deadline for
these proposals is October 1, 2004. Details,
including applications and
information on previously funded conferences, are available at www.maa.org/ugconf.

As part of the broad effort to assist departments as they
reassess their own programs, CUPM will send representatives to section
meetings
during the 2004-05 academic year to lead sessions on the new
Guidelines. To
arrange for a session at your section meeting, the program chair (or
other
meeting organizer) can contact David Bressoud,
chair of CUPM (bressoud@macalester.edu).
The full CUPM Guide 2004 is available on the web at www.maa.org/cupm.

Your section may also be interested in organizing sessions
around the broad themes of interdisciplinary cooperation discussed in
CRAFTY’s
Curriculum Foundations report. Some support for such sessions may also
be
available. To discuss options, you should contact Bill Haver, chair of
CRAFTY (whaver@mail2.vcu.edu).
Voices of the
Partner Disciplines is also online at www.maa.org/cupm/crafty.

MathDL has New“Home” on
the Web

The MAA’s
Mathematical Sciences Digital Library is one of the first collections
in
the NSF-supported National Science Digital Library. If
you have not yet seen the newly revamped site, now hosted and
maintained by the MAA at our offices in Washington,
DC, you are invited to do so and
explore
the expanded resources now available. The web address for MathDL is www.mathdl.org.

The first component of MathDL, the Journal of Online Mathematics and its
Applications,
was launched in January 2001, and our reviewed collection of online
interactive
materials, Digital Classroom
Resources,
appeared soon after. In April of 2004, Convergence,
an online magazine devoted to the use of the history of mathematics in
the teaching
of mathematics, joined the other two components of MathDL.

Many new components of MathDL are in the works. One of the
most exciting will be the MAA
Reviews,
an online continuation and expansion of the MAA's Telegraphic Reviews,
previously presented
in print form in The American
Mathematical
Monthly . It will contain short reviews of many mathematics
books
and will feature an up-to-date online version of the MAA's Basic Library List . This
component of
MathDL will is scheduled to appear in early 2005. Other planned
components
include an edited online collection of Classroom
Capsules compiled from 111 years of MAA publications, and Illustrative Resources , a
collection of
materials edited and organized to support mathematics departments in
implementing the new program guidelines from the MAA Committee on
Undergraduate
Programs in Mathematics (CUPM).

SAUM
Offers On-line
Guide for Assessment of
Student Learning

With support from the National Science Foundation, the MAA
Supporting Assessment in Undergraduate Mathematics (SAUM) project aims
to help
faculty develop effective methods of assessing courses, blocks of
courses, or
entire programs within the mathematics department, not only to answer
external
calls for accountability, but even more important, to assist faculty as
they
make critical decisions about course and curricular revision.

Over the past three years, a series of workshops have
brought together teams of faculty from mathematical sciences
departments with
more experienced colleagues from a variety of institutions to construct
plans
for assessment. In order to reach a broader audience, a self-paced
on-line
guide, “Designing and Implementing a Program for Assessing Learning in
the
Major,” has now been posted on the SAUM website, www.maa.org/saum. Whether you are
just
beginning to think about assessment, or trying to refine existing
mechanisms,
you can find the resources to help you understand and improve student
learning
in your courses.

Indiana, Illinois
and Kentucky
to
hold “Tri-Section” meeting

On November 5-6, 2004,
the M.A.A. sections from Indiana,
Illinois, and Kentucky
will hold a combined meeting at the University
of Evansville, in Evansville,
IN. The Midwest History of
Mathematics
Group is also helping to organize this meeting.

The featured speakers will be:

Ron Graham, president of the M.A.A

Brian Conrey, director of the American Institute of
Mathematics

Woody Dudley, DepauwUniversity

In keeping with the title of the meeting, Prof.
Dudley will
be reprising his well-known talk on trisectors.

Abstracts for submitted talks will be due on October
8.
This
is also the deadline for advanced registration.

Information on submitting an abstract, registration, local
arrangements, Project NExT activities, etc., will be available on the
website
of the Indiana section, http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~rader/INMAA
(or through the section links at MAA Online).

Thanks from David Bressoud,
Chair of the AP Calculus Development
Committee

I want to thank everyone who participated in the College
Board’s Calculus Curriculum Survey this past spring. The results of
this survey
are available on-line at www.maa.org/liaisons/AP-CalcCurrSurvey2004.pdf.
Thanks to help from many of the MAA Liaisons, we were able to collect
responses
from 169 institutions. One of the concerns of the College Board was
whether
colleges are starting to teach more material from several variable
calculus in
the second semester of calculus. If this were a noticeable trend, then
it might
necessitate some changes to the AP Calculus syllabus. The conclusion
from the
survey is that most colleges are doing very little with several
variable topics
in second semester calculus. In fact, the one surprising finding was
that the
AP Calculus syllabus does far more with parametric motion than is found
in most
of the current calculus courses.

The Mathematical Association of America (MAA), through its
Strengthening Underrepresented Minority Mathematics Achievement (SUMMA)
program, supports the participation of mathematics undergraduates from
underrepresented groups in focused and challenging research experiences
to
increase their interest in advanced degrees and careers in mathematics.
Through
funding from the National Security Agency (2003-05) and the National
Science
Foundation (2004-05), the National Research Experience for
Undergraduates Program
(NREUP) supports a minimum of four students at each of six local sites
annually, each site running for six weeks in the summer.

Proposals for summer 2005 are now being solicited, with a
deadline of January 31, 2005.
Further program information and application instructions are on-line at
www.maa.org/nreup.